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#91
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Dell computer with no input
"Wolf K" wrote
| That's my hesitancy about USB sticks and | hard disks. Magnetic storage. I don't really | understand how it works, but it seems that | it has to be less durable than grooves in plastic. | And maybe it's susceptible to magnetic fields? | I don't know. | | | | Cosmic rays? | | The Earth's magnetic field is strong enough to degrade magnetic storage | over time. That's one reason VHS/Beta tapes become unusable. | I didn't know that. I guess it must also apply to cassette tapes for music. I also wonder about things like proximity to a computer or UPS, or even the magnetic field from a car alternator. |
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#92
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Dell computer with no input
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#93
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Dell computer with no input
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#94
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Dell computer with no input
On the "we're all different" theme:
In message , Char Jackson writes: [] True, but I weigh that against the enormous inconvenience of optical media. CD-Rs are completely out of the question for data storage, I hope you'll agree, but even single layer DVD's with their ~4.5GB storage are a non-starter for me. That doesn't even hold a movie unless you forego the HD versions, which I'm not willing to do. Also, I don't have pockets big enough to hold discs. Least with optical you can often retrieve a lot of it Things must have really changed since I exited the stage. I've never, not once, heard of a case where you could retrieve part of a damaged disc. It has always been all or nothing, in my experience. It ought to be possible in theory, just as with magnetic discs. where-as with flashdrives and hard disks it tends to be an all or nothing affair with limited number of attempts. I've never had a flash drive fail on me, so I guess that's something I can look forward to happening someday. When it happens, it won't matter because everything on a flash drive also lives somewhere else. (Famous last words) I've had them fail - and when they do, it's nearly always been sudden and total. For hard drive longevity, the best advice I can offer is to stay away from external drives. Always mount your hard drives internally. I know that flies in the face of how a lot of folks here use their drives, so I don't push it. Of the folks who have asked me to help them replace a failed hard drive over the years, I'd say 99.7% of them have been external. No one ever says they dropped it or bumped it while it was writing or anything. It's always 'it just stopped working all by itself'. If it's internal, they can't get their hands on it and it just keeps going until it's too small to be practical. The main problem with internal (or "always on") drives is not electronic or magnetic failure (though I guess being always on increases the chance of those), it's the danger of corruption - either user mistake, or ransomware or similar (OK, some very holier-than-thou types would say ransomware and similar are user error too, but YKWIM). Optical usually are 4.5 Gb which is a lot less to loose than my 3 Tb drives but I trust the optical more. And here I sit, wondering what to replace my 4TB drives with: 6TB isn't enough gain to be worth it, so it has to be 8TB or 10TB, I guess. My server case only holds 15 data drives, (OS drive is mounted over an unused PCI slot and doesn't use a full bay), so I have to maximize the capacity or I run the risk of having to replace my 15-drive case with a 24-drive case. Ugh... (Wow, what do you handle - HD movies for the whole family? The 250G drive on my main machine still has plenty of space, so my backup 1T one [external and disconnected except at backup time, but a 3.5" one] has multiple backups on it. We certainly are different in that respect!) I do burn the occssional toaster but not nearly as many as days past. Good to hear that it's less of a problem now. I haven't made any for ages (apart from my Macrium boot mini-CDs). Of the ones I made many years ago, some have not worked when re-accessed. I don't think I'd use them for backup as such, though for archiving stuff I'm not _sure_ I'd want again, I might continue to use them. I never use the burner anywhere near its maximum speed, as I feel doing so significantly reduces the reliability of the burn, but I haven't actually done any tests of this. -- J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf Know what happens when you don't pay your exorcist? You get repossessed! - Randle Brashear, 2015-8-9 |
#95
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Dell computer with no input
In message , Mayayana
writes: "Wolf K" wrote | That's my hesitancy about USB sticks and | hard disks. Magnetic storage. I don't really | understand how it works, but it seems that | it has to be less durable than grooves in plastic. | And maybe it's susceptible to magnetic fields? | I don't know. | | | | Cosmic rays? | | The Earth's magnetic field is strong enough to degrade magnetic storage | over time. That's one reason VHS/Beta tapes become unusable. | I didn't know that. I guess it must also apply to cassette tapes for music. I also wonder about things like proximity to a computer or UPS, or even the magnetic field from a car alternator. Though proper storage in mumetal or similar casing can help. I've got old audio (mostly cassette, but some open reel) tapes that are still as good as they ever were (and I _haven't_ been storing them in any sort of metal). VHS (and other video) are not linearly recorded as raw video, but are on an FM subcarrier, making something not that unlike a digital recording in that their deterioration has something like a threshold (though it will vary from player to player). Having said that, I think the main reasons old VHS etc. video recordings are not due to deteriorations of the recordings themselves, but two other main causes: 1. The _equipment_ deteriorates (especially if unused for a while - well, it does if it is used too, but in different ways), and 2. It was never that great anyway. What we used to consider acceptable just isn't nowadays, when compared to modern alternatives. I think reason 2. is the main reason! -- J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf Know what happens when you don't pay your exorcist? You get repossessed! - Randle Brashear, 2015-8-9 |
#96
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Dell computer with no input
In message , pjp
writes: In article , am says... "Char Jackson" wrote | Mayayana mentioned grooves in plastic within the context of backing up | data to DVD. Obviously, there are no grooves... ;-) | My understanding is that the writer cuts grooves at various depths underneath the surface as a way to record data. Is that wrong? In any case, it cuts some kind of marks in plastic. It's not just magnetic storage. Old vinyl is a physical groove, one spiral per side. It's why they wear out over time, e.g. fidelity goes down more often played. CD/DVDs are "burnt". There's a layer of "something special" sandwiched in the disk. Data is stored by either burning (or not burning) a "pit" into that layer. It's physical in a sense that something physical is alterred. My understanding is that rewritable disk use a special layer that can be reheated and hence any prior pits are lost as that surface becomnes more or less a liguid for a moment while it's being erased. The nice thing about optical is that nothing actually touches the surface so no normal physical usage deteriotion. Someone else has given chapter and verse on the chemicals. Mass-produced (stamped, like music CDs and software distribution) do have pits of different heights for 1s and 0s (it's more complex than that but I'll go on); both depths reflect the same amount of light, but the reading spot is designed to be slightly wider than the groove, so that some of the reflection is from the flat area either side of the groove and some from the bottom of the pit; at one depth, the reflections are in phase, at the other they cancel, so that the reflection is either cancelled or isn't. CD-Rs do indeed have some chemical that "burns" - becomes non-reflective - when hit with sufficient laser power; when played in the same way as a stamped CD, the beam either reflects or doesn't, though for a different reason. CD-RWs have a chemical whose reflectivity can be reset. The chemicals are not inert: that in CD-Rs can become darker in time in the bits that are supposed to be reflective, especially if exposed to light for a long time. (The chemicals in -RW discs are, by their very nature, more likely to change properties with time; never use -RWs for archiving.) The writer doesn't actually cut the grooves - for writable discs, the grooves are already there on the blank, for keeping the head aligned; what the burner does (hence the name) is change the reflective properties of the chemical in the groove. (For mass-produced CDs, the stamper - basically not _that_ different from an LP stamper, just a lot more precise! And a reflective layer is added afterwards - does make all the marks on what starts as a flat piece of plastic. And there aren't grooves as such, but the bits are encoded in such a way that the pits themselves are sufficient for head tracking - there is never a long enough run of no-pits that a gap long enough for mistracking is laid down.) -- J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf Know what happens when you don't pay your exorcist? You get repossessed! - Randle Brashear, 2015-8-9 |
#97
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Dell computer with no input
On Sat, 2 Dec 2017 03:05:15 +0000, "J. P. Gilliver (John)"
wrote: On the "we're all different" theme: In message , Char Jackson writes: [] True, but I weigh that against the enormous inconvenience of optical media. CD-Rs are completely out of the question for data storage, I hope you'll agree, but even single layer DVD's with their ~4.5GB storage are a non-starter for me. That doesn't even hold a movie unless you forego the HD versions, which I'm not willing to do. Also, I don't have pockets big enough to hold discs. Least with optical you can often retrieve a lot of it Things must have really changed since I exited the stage. I've never, not once, heard of a case where you could retrieve part of a damaged disc. It has always been all or nothing, in my experience. It ought to be possible in theory, just as with magnetic discs. AFAIK, if the TOC is damaged or corrupt, the disc is toast. where-as with flashdrives and hard disks it tends to be an all or nothing affair with limited number of attempts. I've never had a flash drive fail on me, so I guess that's something I can look forward to happening someday. When it happens, it won't matter because everything on a flash drive also lives somewhere else. (Famous last words) I've had them fail - and when they do, it's nearly always been sudden and total. I have a large-ish Ziploc bag of them, some going back to about 2002 that were handed out by people (vendors) who wanted my help to get their stuff into the corporate network. Someday I should use or write a program that just writes data in a loop until they die. For hard drive longevity, the best advice I can offer is to stay away from external drives. Always mount your hard drives internally. I know that flies in the face of how a lot of folks here use their drives, so I don't push it. Of the folks who have asked me to help them replace a failed hard drive over the years, I'd say 99.7% of them have been external. No one ever says they dropped it or bumped it while it was writing or anything. It's always 'it just stopped working all by itself'. If it's internal, they can't get their hands on it and it just keeps going until it's too small to be practical. The main problem with internal (or "always on") drives is not electronic or magnetic failure (though I guess being always on increases the chance of those), it's the danger of corruption - either user mistake, or ransomware or similar (OK, some very holier-than-thou types would say ransomware and similar are user error too, but YKWIM). I don't personally consider internal drives to be at significant risk. I'm going to need some really bad experiences before I change my mind. I think external drives are at a much higher risk. I know most folks here won't agree with that, but that's what my experience has shown me. And here I sit, wondering what to replace my 4TB drives with: 6TB isn't enough gain to be worth it, so it has to be 8TB or 10TB, I guess. My server case only holds 15 data drives, (OS drive is mounted over an unused PCI slot and doesn't use a full bay), so I have to maximize the capacity or I run the risk of having to replace my 15-drive case with a 24-drive case. Ugh... (Wow, what do you handle - HD movies for the whole family? The 250G drive on my main machine still has plenty of space, so my backup 1T one [external and disconnected except at backup time, but a 3.5" one] has multiple backups on it. We certainly are different in that respect!) My server here has 40TB of internal storage, about 38TB usable after formatting, and I have it configured as a single volume. It would be nice to bump that to at least 80TB so that I'd have some breathing room. I have a stack of 10 2TB drives that I've pulled out of a second PC, but what can a person do with such small drives these days? Not much, so they stay stacked in a drawer for now. -- Char Jackson |
#98
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Dell computer with no input
In message , Char Jackson
writes: [not Char] Least with optical you can often retrieve a lot of it Things must have really changed since I exited the stage. I've never, not once, heard of a case where you could retrieve part of a damaged disc. It has always been all or nothing, in my experience. It ought to be possible in theory, just as with magnetic discs. AFAIK, if the TOC is damaged or corrupt, the disc is toast. I'm imagining a disc sector editor. I've never done it, but then I haven't used sector editing on magnetic discs for decades. where-as with flashdrives and hard disks it tends to be an all or nothing affair with limited number of attempts. [] I have a large-ish Ziploc bag of them, some going back to about 2002 that were handed out by people (vendors) who wanted my help to get their Those (1G or 2G - or possibly even smaller) are probably quite reliable. (See Paul's past posts [Ppp!] for why - bits per cell.) stuff into the corporate network. Someday I should use or write a program that just writes data in a loop until they die. Why destroy them deliberately? [] The main problem with internal (or "always on") drives is not electronic or magnetic failure (though I guess being always on increases the chance of those), it's the danger of corruption - either user mistake, or ransomware or similar (OK, some very holier-than-thou types would say ransomware and similar are user error too, but YKWIM). I don't personally consider internal drives to be at significant risk. You've obviously never had an aggressive virus. (Nor have I, but I do read about them!) I'm going to need some really bad experiences before I change my mind. I think external drives are at a much higher risk. I know most folks here won't agree with that, but that's what my experience has shown me. I don't have experience of external ones in cases. All my use of external drives have been using bare drives, either with a "cable" (though obviously with some electronics in it) or, more recently, a dock. The only ones I've had trouble with were ones that were giving trouble before removal from what they came out of. [] (Wow, what do you handle - HD movies for the whole family? The 250G drive on my main machine still has plenty of space, so my backup 1T one [] My server here has 40TB of internal storage, about 38TB usable after formatting, and I have it configured as a single volume. It would be nice to bump that to at least 80TB so that I'd have some breathing room. I have a stack of 10 2TB drives that I've pulled out of a second PC, but what can a person do with such small drives these days? Not much, so they stay stacked in a drawer for now. You're either winding me up, or you have _very_ different requirements than I! I've never had a drive as big as 2T. What _do_ you handle that takes all that space (-:? -- J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf But remember, in a permissive society, it is also permissible to stay at home and have a nice cup of tea instead. Andrew Collins, RT 2015/2/14-20 |
#99
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Dell computer with no input
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#100
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Dell computer with no input
On 01 Dec 2017, "J. P. Gilliver (John)" wrote
in alt.windows7.general: I never use the burner anywhere near its maximum speed, as I feel doing so significantly reduces the reliability of the burn, but I haven't actually done any tests of this. I've heard it said, and my experience seems to bear this out, that the most secure burns are done at or near the *media*'s rated maximum, not the writer's max. The writer could burn at a faster rate than is best for the media, and that would be a bad thing. My favorite burning software, Imgburn, has a feature that remembers the optimal speed for a particular make of disc (based on it's manufacturing code, not the brand name on the label) and will automatically switch to that operating speed. |
#101
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Dell computer with no input
"J. P. Gilliver (John)" wrote | | VHS (and other video) are not linearly recorded as raw video, but are on | an FM subcarrier, making something not that unlike a digital recording | in that their deterioration has something like a threshold (though it | will vary from player to player). Having said that, I think the main | reasons old VHS etc. video recordings are not due to deteriorations of | the recordings themselves, but two other main causes: | 1. The _equipment_ deteriorates (especially if unused for a while - | well, it does if it is used too, but in different ways), and | 2. It was never that great anyway. What we used to consider acceptable | just isn't nowadays, when compared to modern alternatives. | I think reason 2. is the main reason! I don't know if this is unusual, but I recently re-watched Bill Moyers interviewing the mythologist Joseph Campbell on PBS. The broadcast was in 1988. So I've had the VHS tapes sitting on a shelf for 20 years. (Campbell weathered more over that period. I've always thought of him as a very original thinker. I rad Hero with a Thousand Faces as a teenager and was transformed. It read like a key to religious symbolism. But listening again after all this time I see that he he also had a bit of New Age fever.) The oldest CDs I have date to about '99. Back then I bought Visual Studio 6 and Paint Shop Pro 5. I made a backup of the VS6 CDs. Both VS6 backup (written to Memorex CD with an HP writer) and commercial PSP5 disks are now perfectly functional. As are data CDs going back to at least '04. I don't care for them except to keep them in plastic or paper sleeves. I don't know if it matters, but I've always used only Memorex disks and have used ImgBurn for a number of years to write CDs/DVDs. I once bought a pack of Sony CDs and none of them would write. After that I went back to only Memorex, to be on the safe side. I'd heard rumors that all of them were made by the same 2 companies. I'd also heard rumors that all VHS recorders were made by only 2 companies. But I've never seen any kind of dependable analysis of differences in disk quality. Are there differences that you know of? |
#102
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Dell computer with no input
On 12/01/2017 05:14 PM, Ken Blake wrote:
[snip] I know a man who has used AOL for umpteen years. What's strange about it is that his technical knowledge and skills are generally very good. I had AOL for awhile but left in 1998 (IIRC, that was also the last time I sent a fax). BTW, AOL was supporting "X2" (so-called 56Kbps modems). The local ISP I switched to had not yet, but internet access was still twice as fast. -- 23 days until the winter celebration (Monday December 25, 2017 12:00:00 AM for 1 day). Mark Lloyd http://notstupid.us/ Man created God in his own image. |
#103
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Dell computer with no input
On 12/01/2017 07:23 PM, pjp wrote:
[snip] Old vinyl is a physical groove, one spiral per side. It's why they wear out over time, e.g. fidelity goes down more often played. I once played a 7-inch record repeatedly for several hours. Fidelity really went down. [snip] -- 23 days until the winter celebration (Monday December 25, 2017 12:00:00 AM for 1 day). Mark Lloyd http://notstupid.us/ Man created God in his own image. |
#104
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Dell computer with no input
On 11/28/2017 09:27 AM, Rene Lamontagne wrote:
On 11/28/2017 9:08 AM, philo wrote: On 11/27/2017 01:06 PM, Mathedman wrote: Â*Â*Dell computer with no input capability! My wife just bought a New Dell "all in one" computer. But the thing is bizarre. It has no DVD drive, nor place to install one. It has one USB port --- but the computer does not recognize anything plugged into the USB slot ! Â*Â* Further more, it has Windows 10 installed which doesn't have "Control Panel (at least none I could find) Â*Â* So how do we do anything? We can access internet sites It doesn't even have Internet Explorer! Â*Â*So what to do with the thing? I looked at the specs for the lowest end Dell I could find and it has four USB ports. I suspect you are doing something wrong I suspect Mayayna is right, And she bought a tablet with keyboard. Rene Perhaps so. I never saw the point of a tablet. |
#105
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Dell computer with no input (now CD writing speed)
In message , Nil
writes: On 01 Dec 2017, "J. P. Gilliver (John)" wrote in alt.windows7.general: I never use the burner anywhere near its maximum speed, as I feel doing so significantly reduces the reliability of the burn, but I haven't actually done any tests of this. I've heard it said, and my experience seems to bear this out, that the most secure burns are done at or near the *media*'s rated maximum, not I've read that said - here, I think. the writer's max. The writer could burn at a faster rate than is best for the media, and that would be a bad thing. My favorite burning That I could understand. software, Imgburn, has a feature that remembers the optimal speed for a particular make of disc (based on it's manufacturing code, not the brand name on the label) and will automatically switch to that operating speed. I'm curious, though, especially as you say you have experience to back it up, why faster should be more reliable than slower. I'd have thought the transitions between burn and no-burn would be clearer if made at a lower speed, and perhaps the burn parts would be more definite as well. (I can only think of one possible reason for slow to be marginal, and that would be if the burning laser is not turned off enough when it's supposed to be off, which would be drive-specific rather than media-.) What form does your experience take? -- J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf The best way to achieve immortality is by not dying. |
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